The court was formally opened at half past twelve o’clock, and probably there never was such an array of learning and legal attainments as was present on that occasion. Foremost and overshadowing all was John Marshall, the Chief Justice. “Gentlemen of the profession,” said Parton, “who witnessed the trial, who saw the effective dignity with which the judge presided over the court, who heard him read those opinions, so elaborate and right, though necessarily prepared on the spur of the moment, regarded it as the finest display of judicial skill and judicial rectitude which they had ever beheld.”
Seated at the bar and appearing in behalf of the United States were Colonel George Hay, William Wirt and Alexander MacRae.
Colonel Hay was a son-in-law of James Monroe, who was afterwards President of the United States. He was a lawyer of great industry and much ability, and bore the laboring oar in the trial. He was a zealous partisan of Jefferson, and was assisted in the prosecution by almost daily communications from him. Later he was appointed United States judge for the Virginia district. Mr. Wirt was present at the personal request of President Jefferson. He was the most eloquent and accomplished advocate then at the Richmond bar. There was no one whose rising to speak “so instantaneously hushed the spectators to silence.” “A handsome, fortunate, brilliant, high-minded man was William Wirt,” says Parton, “the toil of whose life it was to achieve those solid attainments which alone make brilliancy of utterance endurable in a court of justice.” Mr. MacRae, the third attorney for the government, was then Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, and while less able than his two colleagues, was a lawyer of “respectable ability and a sharp tongue.”
On the side of the defense were the greatest lawyers of the time. The best known of them was perhaps Edmund Randolph. Mr. Randolph had been a delegate to the Continental Congress and to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, Attorney-General and Governor of Virginia, and Attorney-General and Secretary of State under Washington. He was a man of great experience and learning. Associated with him from the day of Burr’s arrival in Richmond was John Wickham, grandfather of the late General W. C. Wickham and great-grandfather of Hon. Henry T. Wickham, an eminent member of the present bar of Virginia. Mr. Wickham was regarded by many as the ablest lawyer at the Virginia bar. “The qualities,” says Mr. William Wirt in the _British Spy_, “by which Mr. Wickham strikes the multitude are his ingenuity and his wit. But those who look more closely into the anatomy of his mind, disclose many properties of much higher dignity and importance. This gentleman, in my opinion, unites in himself a greater diversity of talents and acquirements than any other at the bar in Virginia.” Another great lawyer of counsel for Burr, and probably the greatest one of his day, was Luther Martin of Maryland. He and Burr had formed a friendship about two years before in Washington, when Justice Chase of the Supreme Court of the United States was impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate for abuse of his office in certain political trials. Burr was then Vice-President of the United States, and presided over the Senate in that celebrated proceeding, says a contemporary, “with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil.” Martin was the leading counsel for Justice Chase, and greatly distinguished himself. Conspicuous also was Benjamin Botts, father of the distinguished John Minor Botts, who although the youngest man on the side of the defense, had already become eminent in his profession.